It is a Kicker applet that displays what you listen to in Amarok.
A full-screen display can also be used independently of the applet.

With this panel applet, you always know what you are listening to, and can watch its cover and star rating: it is always visible.
It allows you to rate your music with one click: you can quickly change the number of stars of your musics from anywhere on your desktop.
Finally, it let you remotely control Amarok with one click from anywhere on your desktop: play next or previous track, pause, play, and seek to another position in the current track.

You also have the possibility to show your currently playing music in a beautiful full-screen display. Ideal for parties or to listen to music while doing something else away from the computer.
The full-screen display can be triggered independently of the panel applet. You can start it from the KMenu or from Amarok itself.

To install:
- You need to have automake 1.9 installed for the compilation to work. It should be Ok on modern Linux distributions. You also need Python for the Amarok script to work (optional). This should also be Ok.
- Extract the archive
- Open a konsole in the extracted folder (in Konqueror, go to the extracted folder and press F4)
- Run this set of command: ./configure --prefix=$(kde-config --prefix) && make && sudo make install
- It will asks your root password to install the applet on your system
- Right click the Kicker, choose "Add an Applet to the Panel..." (once the panel is unlocked)
- Double-click "Kirocker Music Display"
- Start playing a music. The applet is empty when Amarok is stopped or paused, to not annoy you with useless information when you are working
- If you do not want the panel applet, the full-screen display can be trigerred from the KMenu or from Amarok itself (restart Amarok, enable the "Kirocker Music Display" script, and then right-click the playlist to see the action to show full-screen)

Note: After an upgrade from a previous version, press Alt+F2 and type the command "kicker default restart" to restart the Panel with the new installed version.

How to make the Kicker translucent:
The Kicker translucent white vertical background is also included in the package.
- Your screen resolution need to be 1280*800. If not, you will need some artistic skills and a Gimp experience to modify the given background
- Extract the image "Kicker Right Translucent Background.png" located in the Kirocker Music Display archive
- Open your desktop background image with The Gimp
- Drag and drop "Kicker Right Translucent Background.png" to the Gimp window of your background image
- Save the image and set it as your desktop background image
- Right click the Kicker and choose "Configure the Panel..." (once the panel is unlocked)
- Place the panel on the right (click the button on the right)
- Set the size to "Personalized" and enter "96 pixels"
- In the "Appearance" tab, check "Enable transparency"
- Click "Ok" and you're done: ENJOY! Last changelog:

12 years ago

4.0:
- Theme support with wonderful ones provided by default and a graphical editor that is both powerful and surprisingly easy to use
- Have fun karaokees with automatically-scrolling lyrics
- Added a better no-cover image, from Oxygen (sorry guys, but it's the only beautiful and scalable image I found)
- Now using the "Track, Artist, Album" order (instead of "Artist, Album, Track") to be more complient with other displays, such as iPod, Last.fm, and even Amarok.
- Changed the application icon to a better one, using an Oxygen composition. Also show the icon back in the panel big tooltip, as it cannot be confused with an empty cover image anymore
- Removed a lot of bugs
- Enhanced performances

This is the End:
I think I will now return back to Windows, so i'm done with KDE development. I will perhapse help the KDE Windows project in the future, tough.
This project is now abandonned.
I'm afraid it will not be ported to KDE 4, unless new developers pop up.

324 comments

Comments

Hey, love the theme support! really cool work. Please continue to work on this, and port it to KDE 4 asap as well - would love to have this by default in plasma for KDE 4.0. That can still happen if you're quick enough, you know...

I have a vertical panel, 180px wide. It takes only a fraction of the screen height (1050px) because above it I have put kopete and skype.
Usually it's ok, but if I start to plug in usb sticks for example the panel will grow vertically and go under the docked applications.
Have a look here: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=65314

The kicker applet will crash with large playlists (I have figured it to be anything over 106 songs). If Amarok is already playing, it will not show anything but the "Play" button. Eventually it will crash taking the kicker down with it. I had 107 songs in the playlist and removed one, then it started working properly again, so I'm pretty sure 106 songs is the limit. I'm using Amarok 1.4.5 and KDE 3.5.7

Quote, I have the same problem (I'm going mad to understand it!) in my playlist are listed 663 tracks -.- And with Beryl there are also some problem refreshing application (cover don't change). However, very goog application ;) A suggestion: before improving new features, take attention to resolve this tedious bugs :D

=> Large playlists no longer make the interface to stop responding, or do mad things. It should be faster... Even if will not be as snappy as small playlists, but this is a problem that must be solved by Amarok 2.

=> There is also a second good news: by testing very large playlists I finally found and solved a crash problem, reported long time ago but that I wasn't able to reproduce.

I think that after those two fixes, Kirocker Music Display should be solid rock!

I'm going to make a new tarball as soon as possible. But I promess nothing, because my code is messed up with a new (A-MA-ZING) feature I've already began to code.

Note: I do not have Beryl, so please test the changes and tell me if the problems are still there. Or please send screenshots or more detailed information or how in what circumstances the cover bug occurs...

Just trying this out and it crashes when I try to run kirocker. I can't generate a backtrace with debug symbols installed as it says it's just all messed up and is probably due to a corrupted stack. I'm guessing something big is trying to be squeezed into a small variable when compiled for x86_64..... Backtrace w/o debugging symbols below may help but if it is a stack thing then it may be a red herring :/

Great. Confirmed working here. Normally my playlists are not that large but I usually have dynamic playlists which may have also triggered problems. Looks good just now tho'. Consider a Mandriva package forthcoming ;)

be aware that this dcop call has a serious problem: it doesn't call c++ destructors (kicker just exec* itself into its own adressspace) when it shuts down the kicker panel. so applets which changed their settings and call the flush function in their destructors, loose their settings.

i would recommend you to use the killall method. it is much cleaner and call destructors the way they should.

12 years ago

4.0:
- Theme support with wonderful ones provided by default and a graphical editor that is both powerful and surprisingly easy to use
- Have fun karaokees with automatically-scrolling lyrics
- Added a better no-cover image, from Oxygen (sorry guys, but it's the only beautiful and scalable image I found)
- Now using the "Track, Artist, Album" order (instead of "Artist, Album, Track") to be more complient with other displays, such as iPod, Last.fm, and even Amarok.
- Changed the application icon to a better one, using an Oxygen composition. Also show the icon back in the panel big tooltip, as it cannot be confused with an empty cover image anymore
- Removed a lot of bugs
- Enhanced performances

This is the End:
I think I will now return back to Windows, so i'm done with KDE development. I will perhapse help the KDE Windows project in the future, tough.
This project is now abandonned.
I'm afraid it will not be ported to KDE 4, unless new developers pop up.